Gamification

Tracking the hot trend of gamification -- using game-like elements to boost engagement in everything from social games, such as Zynga's FarmVille, to losing weight and staying on top of your finances.

Libe Goad

<p>Texas native Libe Goad resides in New York City and has spent the past decade covering technology and video games for publications including Blender, PC Magazine, Bust, Seventeen and Sync.
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Libe is currently the Editor-in-Chief of AOL's award-winning Games.com group, covering the growing social and casual games industry. Previously, she reported on consumer technology news for PC Magazine and other Ziff Davis properties and was the Editor-at-Large for gaming enthusiast site HappyPuppy.com. In 1999, Goad founded the one of the first women-targeted gaming/technology websites, GameGal.com.
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A semi-regular TV talking head on CNBC, Bloomberg News, ABC, CBS, NBC and others, Libe has been named one of the 50 Most Influential Games journalists by Next-Generation, and has served as a judge for Spike TV's VGA awards, the E3 Game Critics Awards, and Independent Games Festival Awards.

Most social games, whether Zynga’s city building simulations or a gamified contest or tie-in for a consumer brand or movie, are about whittling down the gameplay options to those that either provide basic gameplay enjoyment or else provide some sort of social utility for the user. Hence, the cross-over between traditional game brands and, for example, Facebook games, has been close to non-existent.

On Friday, while everyone was rushing out of town for the holiday weekend, news broke that FarmVille maker Zynga filed an S-1 with the SEC, indicating the company’s plans to go public.Analysts say that Zynga plans to raise 1 billion for its IPO, but investors will have to be willing to take some slightly unusual risks if they want to put their money behind this social gaming giant.

Google this week launched, in beta form, its Facebook-like collection of sharing and social networking tools, called Google+ (or Google Plus, in conversation). It’s about half tweaked versions of existing Google tools, such as chat (video and text), profiles, and ‘like’-style link promotion, along with some new features, including Circles and Hangouts (a related-interest network and group chat room, respectively).

The California politician whose failed video game law was overturned by the Supreme Court earlier this week vows to continue fighting, and says that evidence is "crystal clear" that violent video games hurt kids.